Tuesday, January 27, 2015

As a young
man, I cultivated the faith that yoga was all that was needed to maintain a
perfectly healthy body. In the lead-up to the yoga boom, one of the most famous
yoga teachers claimed that yoga was all that was needed for optimal health, and
I worked hard to believe her.

In one of the
first yoga weekends I ever attended, I was publicly chastised for continuing to
run and bike. I was gravely warned that such activities would strain my heart
and impede my progress on the yogic path. While I didn’t see the logic in these
assertions, I was drawn in by the teacher’s knowledge of structure and anatomy.

In the second
day of the workshop, this same teacher wore a Body by Yoga T-shirt as
she continued to proclaim how yoga was all that was needed for body, mind, and
spirit. Since everybody else in the room seemed to be enthusiastically nodding
in agreement, I decided to set aside what I knew about athletic training in
favor of the promise of yoga fitness.

I remember
thinking that the Body by Yoga T-shirts weren’t the greatest
advertisements for yoga, as their wearers often had bodies that would be best
described as soft. Having come out of an athletic background, I would
berate myself for being so judgmental when such thoughts entered my mind.
Clearly these famous teachers knew what it took to be healthy in body and mind,
and who was I to question their message?

While I
continued to work with reducing judgmental tendencies, I have let go of the
idea that the Modern Postural Yoga (MPY) most of us practice is going to make
us fit. Faith is a powerful force, and it took some serious
soul-searching to shift my view. What finally did shift my view? Several inputs
shifted the inertia that solidified my belief into faith: investigating the
historical argument, further considering anecdotal evidence, and returning to
the merits of science.

Questioning
the Historical Argument

For many
years, we’ve been told that yoga has been around for many years. Depending on
whom you asked, MPY was said to be two thousand to five thousand years old.
Whether on the high or low end of this range, MPY would be old - really old!
For better or worse, though, this argument has largely been refuted in recent
years.

Due to the
dedicated work of scholars like Mark Singleton, it’s become evident that MPY
was developed early in the 20th century. Likely influenced by
movement forms coming out of Northern Europe, MPY is a relatively recent
invention. While yoga philosophy has been around for thousands of years, and
sitting in meditation postures is similarly grounded in antiquity, what most of
us call yoga is a hybrid of movement forms that are scarcely older than our parents
or grandparents.

As a result,
the claim that yogis have kept fit with yogafor thousands of years
doesn’t carry much weight. We do know yogis have been exploring breathing
practices and meditation techniques for thousands of years, though there’s not
much evidence that they practiced Adho Mukha Svanasana, Bhekasana, or even Eka
Pada Galavasana.

Since MPY doesn’t have much history, we are embarking on a massive experiment.
Maybe we’ll find that MPY can and does keep us fit. And maybe we’ll find that the
promise of getting fit by focusing on flexibility was largely an exercise in
wishful thinking.

Individual
Results

Whenever I cut
back on biking or weight training in favor of more yoga, it was a lot of work
convincing myself that I was still healthy. Sometimes I’d be out of breath when
I climbed the stairs, though the party line was that our daily yoga practice
conferred whole-body health. Surely I wasn’t that out of shape?

One of the
most senior Iyengar teachers was held as an example of yoga’s capacity to keep
you fit. Many years ago it was reported that this teacher had been thoroughly
studied in a fitness lab. While I cannot recall the specific details, I do
remember the enthusiastic announcement that he was pronounced fit. I
respected this teacher quite a lot, and if yoga kept him fit, I felt reassured
that it could keep me fit, too.

Unfortunately,
anecdotal evidence was and is notoriously unreliable. Yes, it was their
experience, though was there validity in generalizing from one person’s
experience?

I think we’ve
all read of the 100+ year old person who smoked and drank alcohol every day. Do
we start smoking and drinking because of this anecdotal evidence? I don’t think
many of us have tossed aside kale in favor of Marlboros because we
recognize that the factors underlying longevity are vast and complicated.

Then there’s
the matter of time. Many of the yoga teachers held up as fit were known
for practicing yoga many hours per day. How many of us are willing or able to
invest many hours per day in our physical health? What if the benefits to
health were available in half the time? One quarter of the time? Or even less?

Science

As I mentioned
earlier, MPY is an experiment occurring on a vast scale. By many reliable
accounts, what we’ve come to call yoga (MPY) does not have a historical
precedent. Will the passage of time show us that MPY does, indeed, keep the
body healthy? Does it do so in a time-effective way? Perhaps,
though I have chosen to hedge this bet.

For my tastes,
too many credible scientific studies have demonstrated that a baseline of
strength and aerobic fitness is good for whole body health. In a previous post,
I highlighted just a few of the benefits that have been attributed to regularly
elevating your heart rate. And these benefits are available in as little as
20-30 minutes per day!

For these
three reasons, I have chosen to make MPY part of my weekly routine, though not
a part of my daily routine. While I do meditate each day, which is historically
the cornerstone of yoga, I am no longer practicing the postures each day. Some
days I go for a run. Some days I practice Pilates. Some days I jump rope and
lift weights. And for those days when I’m feeling the need to be restored? I
rest!

Another person's physical accomplishment should not be the sole benchmark of another's. There are some fine print to be considered when thinking about the capacity of the body to remain fit while doing yoga. There are those who will remain healthy through yoga alone, while others need cardio and weight training to be "fully fit." There are also a lot of factors like food, environment, sleeping habits, etc, that can greatly affect one's physical condition.

Welcome to the Alignment Yoga blog, where you'll find yoga articles, videos and audio presentations by Scott Anderson, with an emphasis on how to avoid common mistakes we make doing this ancient practice with our Western bodies and minds.